


Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy

by crorvid



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: First Kiss, Getting Together, Idiots in Love, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Love, Love Confessions, M/M, Multi, Mutual Pining, POV Crowley (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-06-24 10:57:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19722277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crorvid/pseuds/crorvid
Summary: It wasn’t nerves. Post-Apocalypse-that-wasn’t jitters, perhaps. Not nerves. There was no reason for it to be nerves. They had dined together countless times. Why would he be nervous now?No, Crowley thought, nervously.Definitely not nerves.





	Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Queen, of course. I believe there are sixteen direct references to the lyrics in here.

It wasn’t nerves. Post-Apocalypse-that-wasn’t jitters, perhaps. Not nerves. There was no reason for it to be nerves. They had dined together countless times. Why would he be nervous now? _No_ , Crowley thought, nervously. _Definitely not nerves._

As Crowley lied to himself—one of his favorite hobbies, up there with threatening his plants and sitting as though his thighs had just gone through a nasty divorce—he set an alarm, giving himself an hour to get from his flat to the Ritz, where he was meeting Aziraphale at nine o’clock precisely.

He wasn’t entirely wrong. They had dined together countless times; countless, of course, unless one was an immortal occult being with a good memory and a deep-seated romantic streak that one kept firmly locked away somewhere deep inside of oneself. If one was, then one would know that Crowley and Aziraphale had dined together exactly one thousand seven hundred forty-six times.[1] Crowley adjusted his cuffs and tried to pretend that he didn’t know that number.

If Crowley admitted to himself that he knew that number, he would have to admit some other, much more monumental things. It was a slippery slope, being honest with oneself. First, he would have to consider why he could recall that number with such ease when he could barely recall anything of the fourteenth century beyond a vague dislike of the whole affair. Then, he might have to draw conclusions, the first and potentially most dangerous of which being that he could recall that number because it had to do with Aziraphale, and he found that he had no trouble at all recalling things that involved Aziraphale. The slope only got slipperier when he thought about why that may be the case.

 _Love,_ much like _nice,_ is a four-letter word.

 _Love_ has no place in a demon’s brain, and even less of one in his heart.

But Crowley had never been a particularly good demon. He had come to terms with this almost immediately, and it had only gotten more obvious over time. Not that he had been a good angel, either, for what it was worth. He just was so easily fed up with the bureaucracy of it all. No, Crowley was a being who appreciated choice. That was what made him so good at tempting, which was his favorite part of his job.

Tempt the man to sin. Tempt the woman to sin. Tempt the angel to stay just another hour, really, it’s not like you sleep anyway! Come, have another glass of wine, don’t mind how warm my hand is when it brushes yours. Yes, that’s it, laugh at my jokes, I smile when you smile.

Temptation accomplished, certainly. It just eventually became unclear who was tempting whom.

And so, as Crowley paced around his flat, thoughts appearing in his mind only to be stomped beneath his snakeskin shoes, he focused entirely on turning on the charm that he had spent millennia cultivating. The problem with this, however, is that when one has spent millennia on anything, it becomes second nature. And when something is second nature, it doesn’t require much focus, which allows the mind to wander places it shouldn’t.

Without even realizing he was doing it, Crowley was thinking about Aziraphale again.

Crowley spent a great deal of time thinking about Aziraphale. Many of these thoughts were perfectly acceptable. _I wonder if the angel kept up his end of the bargain and did that temptation for me. I’d better call Aziraphale and let him know I took care of that miracle._ Purely business, of course. The Arrangement, and all that.

Some thoughts, however, carried a bit more weight. _I mustn’t forget to give Aziraphale that manuscript I found. I wonder what the angel thinks of this business, I should call him._ The sort of thoughts that friends might have, if he were to dare consider the angel a friend.

And then there were the dangerous thoughts. These were the thoughts that Crowley would very much like to pretend he didn’t have, and he generally did a good job of it. But every once in a while, when Crowley really wasn’t paying attention, one would slither into his conscious brain and he would have to go lie down for a few days.

_I miss him. I wonder if he misses me. Does he think of me, when I’m not around? I wonder what he’s doing right now. I wish he were here. I wish I could touch him. I bet his skin is soft._

When his alarm went off, Crowley, who had become so lost in thoughts of the third category that he had completely lost track of where he was and what he was doing, did what any suave, charming demon would do: he tripped and fell over. _A good omen for the night to come,_ he thought, brushing himself off and grabbing the keys to the Bentley.

_Haven’t I fallen enough times?_

\---

Dinner with Aziraphale was always delightful, and tonight was no exception. Crowley paid the bill, Aziraphale tasted the wine, selecting the perfect one for the occasion and proceeding to drink a great deal of it with Crowley’s eager assistance. And so, in a state which Aziraphale, if asked, might describe as pleasantly tipsy and Crowley as thoroughly pissed, Crowley offered Aziraphale a ride.

“C’mon, angel, let’s drive back in ssstyle,” Crowley hissed. His saloon would do quite nicely, he thought, in getting the two of them safely back to Aziraphale’s bookshop, where, if he was lucky, he might even spend the night. Passed out on a couch, yes, but it was the thought that counted.

Aziraphale hesitated out of politeness before accepting the ride, clambering into the passenger seat of the Bentley with all the grace of a thoroughly drunken angel. Crowley slammed on the gas, thanking… well, someone, anyway, that the engine was loud enough to hide the pounding of his heart. It wasn’t often that he got to drive Aziraphale anywhere but up the wall, and he would be lying to himself if he said it didn’t make him feel something.

Of course, lying to himself was one of his favorite hobbies.

Another of his favorite hobbies, however, was getting drunk with Aziraphale. Beyond the obvious appeal of seeing the angel drop his quite-literally-holier-than-thou air in favor of becoming a giggly, wide-eyed mess, Crowley enjoyed the freedom of having an excuse for sitting too close and staring too long. Shoulders clumsily bumping, hands touching, even arms flung around shoulders could be easily explained away as merely byproducts of alcohol consumed in excess. Aziraphale would never have to know that Crowley would do anything to make contact like that sober, and Crowley didn’t have to admit it to himself either.

“I think ‘m gonna sober up now.”

Well, that was unfortunate. And somewhat unusual. Crowley took off his sunglasses and blinked at Aziraphale, who was seated on the couch in the back room of his bookshop staring glassily up at him in the doorway. As he watched, he could see the angel’s eyes clear and his flush diminish.

Crowley liked being drunk with Aziraphale. He doubted that he would like being drunk around Aziraphale. And so, reluctantly, he sobered up as well, still wondering why Aziraphale had decided to forgo his drunken state so early in the evening. As the alcohol left his system, he realized that he was still staring. He also realized that he didn’t particularly want to stop.

Crowley had almost lost Aziraphale. The world had come frightfully close to ending, and if it had, he would never have seen him again. If he were being honest with himself—one of his least favorite tasks, down there with explaining the finer points of modernity to Hastur and driving the speed limit—he knew why he had been so nervous for dinner at the Ritz, in a way that he had never been nervous before. Almost losing someone has a nasty way of forcing the realization of how much you care about that person, which is a realization that Crowley had been avoiding for a very, very long time.

 _Love,_ much like _nice,_ is a four-letter word.

 _Love_ has no place in a demon’s brain, and even less of one in his heart.

But Crowley had never been a particularly good demon. He cared too much. He cared about his Bentley, and his flat, but more than anything else he cared about Aziraphale. Demons weren’t supposed to care about much of anything, especially not the way Crowley cared about Aziraphale. The way he thought about him always, when he wasn’t with him. The way he did him favors, little demonic miracles just to make him smile. The way he had fallen completely, hopelessly, ridiculously in love with him over six thousand years of fraternizing and thwarting and romancing and duty-swapping and shared meals.

And so, Crowley kept staring. He took a cautious step forward, almost against his own will. When Aziraphale held his gaze, unflinching, he took another. And another, and another, until he was standing in front of him. Aziraphale stood, slowly, to face him.

“Angel?”

“Yes, my dear?”

Crowley had no words planned in response to Aziraphale’s questioning tone. How could he possibly explain the blistering concoction of love and fear and relief and longing that burned like hellfire in the pit of his chest? That the moment Aziraphale covered him with his wing in the Garden he had sparked a flame that had slowly been consuming Crowley for six thousand years? That the Apocalypse-that-wasn’t had made Crowley understand exactly how much he burned for the angel now standing inches away from him, how much he would give to ensure that no matter where he went, they could be together?

“I love you.”

Well, it was a start.

Aziraphale looked as though he had flipped a coin to decide whether he would be shocked or completely unruffled and it had landed perfectly on its edge.

“You do?”

The coin wobbled a bit and fell, shock-side up.

Crowley had seen the angel make almost every facial expression that one could possibly make with a face that is, for all intents and purposes, human. He knew exactly how his jaw lifted in holy indignation, how his eyes narrowed when a customer entered his bookshop and how they crinkled at the corners when he saw the waiter arriving with their food. He knew what it looked like when Aziraphale bit back a fond smile, usually when Crowley said something funny in a blasphemous sort of way. But this one he hadn’t seen before. This one was new, and dangerous, and electric.

The look on Aziraphale’s face made Crowley want to swallow him whole.

The problem that a demon has when he falls for a being of pure love held together at the seams by blond curls and outdated tartan is that it’s almost always impossible to tell if he loves you back, because he loves everything. The look that Aziraphale was giving him now, though, was perhaps the most compelling evidence Crowley had ever received that he wasn’t the only one in the room being consumed by a slow, tortuous blaze inside him.

Crowley inhaled slowly.

“Yes.”

He exhaled.

“So much. For so long.”

Aziraphale’s hands were cool and softer than he could have imagined on his cheeks and only then did he realize that his face was burning.

“Tell me, my dear. Tell me everything.”

As good as Crowley was at lying to himself, he was terrible at lying to Aziraphale. Something about the angel made it impossible. Crowley supposed that it was probably the fact that he was in love with him.

He told him everything. He told him how he had fallen from grace and then immediately onward into love right there in Eden. How, when Aziraphale had covered him with his wing and shielded him from the rain, he realized that while he was clearly not a good angel, he was not a very good demon either. How he spent six thousand years lying to himself, until it became one of his favorite hobbies, because he was so terribly afraid of what would happen if he told Aziraphale the truth. And how he couldn't lie anymore, because it had all almost ended in flame and fury and he wouldn't have known what to do with himself if it had ended and he had never been honest.

“Thank you.”

_Thank you?_

“For being honest.”

_Oh._

“And for saying that you love me.”

_Well, I do. Desperately. Hopelessly. Stupidly._

“Because that means that I can tell you that I love you, too.”

Doing the demonic thing never seemed to work out for Crowley. For example, the demonic thing to do would be not to fall in love with an angel, and he had failed miserably at that. He had no idea what the angelic thing to do in this situation was—he had been an angel once, but that was a long time ago—but whatever it was, he didn’t want to do that either. And so, stuck between the two as he always was, Crowley decided to do the human thing.

He kissed him.

His lips were even softer than his hands and when Crowley pulled back only moments later they were curled into a beatific smile. He radiated love. It made Crowley’s skin feel like he was standing in the hot summer sun. It would almost have been unpleasant, if anything Aziraphale could do could possibly be unpleasant to him. As it was, he basked in it for a moment before all his old anxieties got the better of him and he had to ask.

“Are you sure?”

Aziraphale’s smile didn’t waver even for a moment.

“Of course I’m sure, my dear.” Aziraphale kissed him, softly, briefly, gently, but Crowley’s breath caught in his throat anyway. “I’ve loved you for a very long time.”

It took Crowley a moment to remember how to speak.

“Where do we go from here?”

It was a fair question. Crowley and Aziraphale had found themselves in the most uncharted of territories. As much as Crowley loved choice, he often found himself paralyzed with fear that he would choose wrong and ruin everything. It was the demon in him. And so, as he had done many times before, he turned to Aziraphale for the answer. He was an angel, after all. Crowley wasn’t sure he could even do the wrong thing.

“Well, to start, I should very much like to kiss you again.”

Crowley grinned.

“Come on and get it.”

Aziraphale did. He kissed Crowley again, and again, and his hands tightened where they had been comfortingly placed on his hot face, holding him now with an intent far removed from comfort. Crowley’s hands, which had been balled into tight, anxious fists at his sides, relaxed and came to rest on the small of the angel’s back, earning him a satisfied hum that lit his entire being on fire.

When Aziraphale pulled back, a smile still on his face, Crowley could do little more than stare. And stare he did, as Aziraphale slid his hands down and off of his face and sat back down on the couch. He had never seen the angel sit quite like this. He usually sat ramrod straight, hands folded in his lap, not reclining backwards with his hands resting palm-up on his knees, which were considerably further apart than usual. Tugging his eyes back to Aziraphale’s face, Crowley noticed the flush on his cheeks as he spoke.

“Care to join me?”

Crowley cared to very much, and join him he did, depositing himself into the angel’s lap with his long, gangly legs wrapped around him. His hands slid into Aziraphale’s hair, holding on for dear life as he felt the softest hands in the world trailing under his jacket and up his spine and the softest lips in the world on his again.

He could feel Aziraphale’s pulse in the fingertips now firmly holding him by the waist and nape, could feel his heartbeat grow faster, faster as Crowley tightened his grip on the angel’s curls. There was something so maddeningly human about the whole thing, but Crowley couldn’t find it in himself to care. All he cared about now was the way his whole body burned with love heat and the way the skin of his neck tingled when Aziraphale pressed his mouth to it.

His lips were soft. His teeth were not. Crowley couldn’t tell which he liked more. He supposed he loved the dichotomy of the two, the buzz under his skin as the angel bit down followed by the soothing swipe of his tongue and the tender press of his lips over the mark he had left behind. Aziraphale’s proclivity for blending sweetness and acrimony had left many a mark on Crowley’s mind, but he also enjoyed the more physical reminders that Aziraphale, for all the love and light he had in him, was also not a particularly good angel.

They kissed countless times; countless, of course, unless one was an immortal occult being with a good memory and a deep-seated romantic streak that one had decided was perhaps one of his stronger points. Crowley knew the exact number. He also had a new favorite hobby.

Curled up with his angel, hours later, lying in a bed that almost never got used by its owner, who was not fond of sleep, Crowley decided that maybe being honest with himself was worth the trouble. He pressed a sleepy kiss to the corner of Aziraphale’s mouth, some tucked-away part of his brain adding one to the tally that he hoped would never stop climbing.

“How do you feel?”

Aziraphale hummed. “Right.”

Crowley felt that way, too.

**Author's Note:**

> 1One thousand seven hundred forty-seven, if he counted the time they had to flee that hole-in-the-wall in Berlin after a surprise visit from the Archangel Fucking Gabriel. He generally didn’t, since they left before their food had arrived, but Aziraphale had left behind enough money to pay for the meal and a very generous tip for the wait staff’s inconvenience. [return to text]


End file.
